1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital video recorders. More particularly, the present invention relates to a digital video recorder employing a unique ID to interlock with encrypted video programs stored on a storage device.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Video cassette recorders (VCRs) in the past used a tape cassette storage medium to record video programs in analog form. Copyright protection with VCRs is not a significant concern since the quality of the video degrades when copied from one VCR to another. More recently, however, digital video recorders (DVRs) have been introduced which store video programs in digital form. Copyright protection with DVRs is a significant concern since the video reproduces without degradation when copied digitally from one DVR to another.
Prior art DVRs typically employ a conventional hard disk drive (HDD), such as an IDE hard disk drive, as the digital storage device since HDDs have sufficient capacity to store video content and are relatively inexpensive due to their prevalent use in personal computers (PCs). Rather than design and manufacture a customized HDD for the DVR market, DVRs are constructed similar to a PC, including DVR host circuitry for interfacing with a commodity HDD which reduces the cost of the DVR. This design, however, has subjected the copyrighted video programs to unauthorized reproduction, for example, by eavesdropping while the copyrighted content is transferred from the DVR host circuitry to the HDD, or by removing the HDD and installing it in another DVR or in a PC.
There is, therefore, a need to protect against unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted video programs in a DVR employing a cost effective, commodity HDD.